Pilot of Patent Prosecution Highway Program to use PCT Work Products

On 13 November 2009, the Trilateral Offices (the European Patent Office, the Japan Patent Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office) agreed to expand the existing set of bilateral Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) work sharing arrangements by starting a PCT/PPH pilot program under which PCT work products established by one of the Trilateral Offices in its capacity as a PCT International Searching or Preliminary Examining Authority (namely, international search reports, written opinions and international preliminary examination reports) may form the basis for PPH requests in each of the Trilateral Offices during national phase processing of the international application.  The pilot program, which is scheduled to start on 29 January 2010, will greatly expand the potential of the PPH work sharing arrangements, which until now have been limited to work products established in respect of national patent applications.

Under the PPH, an applicant receiving a determination from an office of first filing that certain or all claims in an application are allowable may request that the corresponding application filed at a second office be advanced, out of turn, for examination in respect of those allowable claims.

For further information on this development, see the Trilateral website at:

         http://www.trilateral.net/index.html

where details of the new pilot program will be available shortly.